Ballough, Norwood, Was Member of Bulkeley’s MTB Squadron Three
Listed among the officers and personnel attached to Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Three in the final pages of “They Were Expendable,” the story of the gallant Navy group which sunk many a Japanese ship in the battle of the Philippines and which brought MacArthur out of the islands, is the name of Rudolph Ballough, Norwood’s first World War II casualty.
Ballough’s sister, Mrs. Louise King, lives at 16 Philbrick Street. She was informed early last spring that her brother was declared to have lost his life in the service of his country as of January 22nd. Ballough, in the Navy 13 years, was 28 years old and a Machinists Mate 1st class.
The last word his sister had from him was a phone call in August, 1941. As William L. White tells the story of the Squadron in “They Were Expendable,” the Squadron went out to the islands that fall Every officer and man in the outfit was picked by Lieutenant (now Lieutenant Commander) John D. Bulkeley from volunteers who were told they were heading for trouble.
Today there are but five men left of Motor Torpedo Boat Squadron Three. At the beginning, it consisted of six boats, a dozen men to each. The MTB is a plywood speedboat about 70 feet long and 20 wide, powered by three Packard marine motors.
The only photo Mrs. King has of her brother Rudolph Ballough is one in a group picture of Navy men taking a course at the Packard Motor School. It’s the photo from which the picture of Ballough published here is taken.
Each MTB boat is armed with four torpedo tubes and four 60-caliber machine guns. There isn’t an ounce of protective armor on them. To quote: “They’re little eggshells, designed to roar in, let fly a Sunday punch, then speed out, zigzagging to dodge the shells.
‘They Were Expendable” is the story of the hexoic role these boats played in the Philippines battle as told to William L. White by Lieutenant Commander Bulkeley and three other officers who, with one other, are all that are left of the Squadron. It tells of operating without a base, on limited rations, and on a limited supply of sabotaged gas, someone having dissolved wax in it.
It tells of shooting down Jap planes, of hell at night in Subic Bay, of torpedoing a Jsp cruiser, of being shelled by American guns, of smashing a Jap landing party, of the escape through the storm’ and night with MacArthur, and later with President Quezon of the Philippines, of feat after feat of dramatic courage performed in simple, matter of fact devotion to duty.
It tells of injury and death and of treacherous coral reefs, of threats from a Jammed torpedo, of sinking a cruiser in aid to the big, American defensive which was to. come but never did—and of the coming, in its stead, of Japanese planes which first bombed then machine-gunned one of the last of the MTB’s of Squadron Three.
From December 7th to the last torpedoes the Squadron fired in; the defense of Bataan they had probably sunk a hundred times, their tonnage in enemy warships. For every man in the combined crews they’d probably killed or downed 10 Japanese. At that time the Squadron had lost but two boats and had one man wounded and three missing. Later they lost more boats and more men, but the Japanese were to pay at almost the same ratio.
“They Were Expendable” is a gallant story of gallant men, One of those men was Rudolph Ballough, Norwood, Mass.
(All articles originally published in the Norwood Messenger)